Walter Lippmann wrote in 1943 that any foreign policy must be solvent: a power that chooses to deploy a real foreign policy must have the means to match its ambitions. Everything rests on a balance between commitment and necessary power, otherwise the country could be nothing but a colossus with feet of clay… Of course, it was not Lippmann that I had in mind that morning, on the streets of Denver.
I can totally imagine, as I walk along the 16and Avenue, how prosperous the last decade has been for the city here, at the foot of the Rockies. The aerospace industry, biotechs and finance have established a foothold there, bringing with them tourism, foreign investment and the financing of cultural and artistic institutions. To the point where the quality of life in this high-altitude city placed it at the top of the charts, ahead of classics like Austin or Portland: gastronomic life, microbreweries, proximity to the mountains… But that was before.
Of this, only traces remain. Companies have deserted, the majority of the 250,000 workers who came to the city center in 2019 now work remotely. The urban core is a disaster area, with one doorstep in three barricaded, a crime rate soaring in a state that now has two shootings a day, while we begin to measure the extent of the opiate epidemic on social and economic structures.
There were more than 800 fentanyl-related deaths in Colorado last year — a 260% increase since 2019. All age groups are affected, including 10-18 year olds, whose number of deaths linked to this drug has been multiplied by seven in one year. In this state, violent crimes increased by 17%, murders, by 47%. In the streets, which still bear the traces of a happier and not so distant period, the tension is palpable.
However, Denver is not unique. Downtowns are shrinking across the United States. The US Census Bureau indeed shows a decline in absolute value of the size of the 56 largest American agglomerations and real internal migrations. But it goes further. And these visible fractures hide others. Deeper. And durable.
American society has changed. Irretrievably. Indeed, the number of Americans who have died from COVID-19 is expected to soon pass the million mark. Imperial College London’s COVID-19 Response Team estimates 200,000 orphaned children, 250,000 those who have lost at least one parent to the pandemic – with the key to restructuring family units and managing trauma related to bereavement, but also to the effects of the disease on the daily life of Americans. The impacts of COVID (not only medical, but related to bereavement, the associated stresses, having to face the lies about this “simple cold”) on families and on children will have to be measured in the years to come. , explains Professor Janet Currie, of Princeton University, in Scientific American.
Especially since the school structure has been largely redefined: the share of children schooled at home has, according to the Census Bureau, increased from 3 to 8% nationally. And in the wake of the increased divide on school issues (ranging from weapons at school to textbooks and course content), many families are considering not sending their children back to school – when there is there are so few safeguards that it can pose a risk to children, as Professor Elizabeth Bartholet wrote in theArizona Law Review in 2020.
We must add to this that the restructuring of the labor market is substantial, to the point where we speak of a “great resignation”. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, since July four million people have quit their jobs every month. This must be linked to the fact that life expectancy is declining (once again) in the United States more rapidly than in other industrialized countries, according to a published studyrecently on JAMA, due to pre-existing conditions (unequal and expensive health system, erratic management of the opiate crisis), social inequalities (minorities are hit hard) and poor management of the pandemic.
As Professor Aldon Morris of Northwestern explains, the pandemic has come to throw salt on pre-existing wounds in American society. The social network was fragile for a large part of American society, due to the economic earthquake of 2008. However, for some, the pandemic came to sever the last links that kept them afloat.
This is why, noting, like the organization Everytown for Gun Safety, an overall increase in violent incidents across the country, several organizations – including the Society for Human Resource Management – fear an increase in violence when returning to work. Especially since insecurities grow with inequalities. One thinks of inflation, of the impact of the international context, but also of the vulnerability of supply chains — as shown by the long-lasting shortage (and, consequently, rationing) of infant formula on a global scale. country for a few weeks.
It should come as no surprise, write Jennifer McCoy of Georgia State and Benjamin Press of the Carnegie Endowment, that the divide is widening and dissension is ravaging the country. Which then raises the question of Lippmann, evoking the gap that widens when a nation’s foreign policy commitments exceed its power. Should we see Joe Biden’s indecisions and reversals as slips of the tongue, imbued with a certain rationality, or, conversely, as his inability to establish a foreign policy on a solid foundation of domestic policy?